From Book to Oscar Contender

Save the Date

Awards season will wrap up on Sunday, February 28, when the 88th annual Academy Awards are announced. This year the categories are brimming with Oscar-nominated films that were based on books. Here’s a round up of the most notable movies and their source material.

The Nominees

The Big Short, based on the book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis. The author examines the causes of the U.S. stock market crash of 2008 and its relation to overpriced real estate, bad mortgages, shareholder demand for excessive profits, and the growth of toxic derivatives.

Nominated categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Editing

Brooklyn based on the novel Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín. Forced to leave behind her family in Ireland to accept a job in 1950s America, bookkeeper Eilis Lacey unexpectedly falls in love with an Italian man with a big family, who she fears losing when tragic news arrives from home.

Nominated categories: Best Picture, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay

Carol, based on the book The Price of Salt ;by Patricia Highsmith.
The Price of Salt tells the riveting story of Therese Belivet, a stage designer trapped in a department-store day job, whose salvation arrives one day in the form of Carol Aird, an alluring suburban housewife in the throes of a divorce. They fall in love and set out across the United States, pursued by a private investigator who eventually blackmails Carol into a choice between her daughter and her lover.

Nominated categories include: Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography

The Danish Girl, based on the novel The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff. A novel set in Copenhagen, Paris, and Dresden in the 1920s, introduces a man who discovers he is a woman, and the woman who will do anything for him, in a tale of love and marriage in the midst of fundamental crisis.

Nominated categories: Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Production Design and Best Costume Design

The Martian, based on the novel The Martian by Andy Weir. When a dust storm forces his crew to evacuate the planet while thinking him dead, astronaut Mark Watney finds himself stranded on Mars's surface, completely alone. Armed with nothing but his ingenuity, his engineering skills--and a gallows sense of humor that proves to be his greatest source of strength--Mark embarks on a dogged quest to stay alive, but will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him

Nominated categories include: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Visual Effects

The Revenant based on the novel The Revenant by Michael Punke. In this story of survival, Hugh Glass is an expert trapper and frontiersman. After being viciously mauled by a massive grizzly bear and abandoned and left for dead by his fellow trappers, Hugh is pushed to survive by one thing --revenge.

Nominated categories include: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor and Best Cinematography

Room, based on the novel Room by Emma Donoghue. Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape

Nominated categories: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay

Steve Jobs, based on the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. A biography of Steve Jobs, focusing on his intense personality and creative success as the founder of Apple, based on interviews with Jobs and more than a hundred, friends, family, and colleagues.

Nominated categories: Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress

Cast Your Vote

Make your picks and share with friends! See if you can predict the winners by completing this Oscar Ballot.

Author Bio:

Shawna S. is a Library Assistant at the Woodside and Portola Valley Libraries. She studied Film History in college and enjoys comparing books to their film adaptations.